Firmware updates on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS have got smaller, as Canonical has backported the split Linux firmware packages it introduced in 26.04. To make the change in noble, the linux-firmware package is now a meta-package that pulls in all of the individual firmware packages. Functionally, nothing changes; all installs get the full whack. The binary blobs the distro uses are now split across 18 vendor-specific sub-packages: Some non-default firmware was already available to install as a sub-package, e.g., linux-firmware-xilinx-vcu, so those don’t change (but aren’t looped into the new metapackage). The linux-firmware package was a bundle of mostly closed-source binary […]
You’re reading Ubuntu 24.04 splits firmware packages for faster updates, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
